I read on Engadget that Nokia kills some part of the N9 handheld computer phone, successor to the N900 and first planned device by Nokia to run Linux-based operating system Meego (which replaces Nokia’s Maemo project). This just after having read an e-mail by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, former Microsoft sub-president, internally complaining on Nokia not having an iPhone/Android competitor. Which is utterly false and rather a misdirection of effort in marketing, which the N900 has been lacking heavily on.

I wrote the following mail and tried (just for the heck of it) to mail stephen.elop@nokia.com with a description of my enjoyment with the Nokia N900.

Hello, i recently took part through media outlets that you criticize Nokia internally for not having something competitive enough for the iPhone or Android platforms.

I am personally an owner of the Nokia N900 since a year back, and several of my friends and colleagues have also purchased this phone. We believe that the openness of the underlying platform Maemo (which will be incorporated into Meego in your deal with Intel) is its greatest power.

What is lacking, perhaps, is the marketing of the N900 (or future models). It is already today a very powerful mobile computer phone with which you can do just about anything – which is definitely not the case with the tied down Android and iPhone alternatives.

The Linux-powered Maemo/Meego operating system is one of the best design choices Nokia has made. It means that already existing software for the entire, steadily growing, Linux community is easily portable. That enables actual, useful applications on the “smartphone” rather than irrelevant and pointless “apps”.

I am still incredibly happy with my N900, and anyone I hear who got it is too. Continue this trend and please don’t fall for the meaningless “apps” and a system of restriction and user lockdown. The iPhone sucks and the Android platform is far from capable of delivering the full potential of a free and open source system.

Mmm, emailing people who probably don’t get (or rather read) the mail at all…

Update 2011-02-09: Stephen Elop (I assume) was quick to respond. I received the following e-mail just now:

Thanks for your note,
Stephen

Thus I encourage everyone who enjoy Nokia’s FOSS encouragement, which has brought the Nokia N900 to the market, to e-mail their opinions to him as I did. This could very well influence his view on the device and its successors. Perhaps you can be even briefer than me.

Apparently 20 degrees Celsius is too cool for Google. They want to run their data centers in 25 degrees. Quoting the article, this basically means that chips themselves might get as warm as 55 degrees Celsius.

According to Mark Monroe, Sun Microsystems’ director of sustainable computing, data center managers can save 4 per cent in energy costs for every degree (Fahrenheit) they raise the thermostat. If you run your data center at a higher temp, you use less power and spend less money on the equipment needed to cool it down.

Of course this also means environmental goodies. Less cooling, means less energy required. Considering how none of Google’s data centers are in Sweden (or any other environmentally sane country) this probably means that the energy used is produced in Bad™ ways. Burning oil, coal, babies or whatever.

But then again, 25 degrees celsius? Heck, that’s cooler than my office where I run mission critical IRC clients! The cooling I use is a pair of 80mm fans connected to a power supply hanging from the ceiling and an outlet.